Making sense of the world through data
The focus of this blog is #data #bigdata #dataanalytics #privacy #digitalmarketing #AI #artificialintelligence #ML #GIS #datavisualization and many other aspects, fields and applications of data
Hard not to find amazing and frankly quite suspicious that new and often toxic ideas are first tested in Australia and New Zealand nowadays. These countries used to be out of the way bastions of freedom lost at the edge of the world. Now they are test beds of dangerous, experimental and often toxic ideas, before being sharpened, and rolled out in other countries.
This was especially obvious during the Covid crisis. And now the follow up, pay-as-you-drive concept. In the end, the objective is almost always the same, control and limit, where you can go and what you can do, and in order to do that implement new surveillance technologies. If there was no Globalist conspiracy, we would have to create one to explain what is going on.
They are not saying precisely how this will be enforced, but
my guess is that some sort of black box with GPS tracking will be
required to be added to most vehicles.
“We’re not going to shift millions of drivers from a simple
system at the pump to queues at retailers. So, instead of expanding a
clunky government system, we will reform the rules to allow the market
to deliver innovative, user-friendly services for drivers.”
Bishop said a handful of E-RUC companies already did this for about
half of the country’s heavy vehicle fleet and there were several
companies, both domestic and international, with technology that could
make complying with RUC cheaper and easier.
…
Bishop promised the changes would support “a more user-friendly, technology-enabled RUC system” with multiple retail options available to motorists.
“Eventually, paying for RUC should be like paying a power bill online, or a Netflix subscription. Simple and easy,” he said.
“I expect to pass legislation in 2026, followed by an
updated Code of Practice for RUC providers. We will also engage with the
market in 2026 to assess technological solutions and delivery
timelines. In parallel, NZTA and Police will upgrade their systems to support enforcement in a digital environment.“
The trend in Europe is accelerating. Without cheap energy, you simply cannot run a modern economy. And so Europe will continue burning its dry wood until nothing is left. This is what ideology does. Thankfully, the Germans will be "saving the planet", or maybe not since by then they will be irrelevant energy-wise. Eventually, all this will have to be someone's responsibility. The Russians? Europe will need to rearm although without industry or energy, the continent may find that rather difficult. This, in a nutshell is what decadence is made of. The unwillingness to do the right but difficult things when you can, and the inability to do anything at all later. Thankfully, the process leaves superb cities behind: Rome, Venice, Madrid, Amsterdam, Vienna, Paris, London... With so many examples, you would supposed that they would have figured out the problem by now. But apparently not!
Germany
is being hit by a wave of insolvencies. Now in the third year of a
prolonged recession, the economic situation is more alarming than during
the 2009 financial crisis.
The death spiral of German businesses
has reached dramatic proportions. According to the Leibniz Institute for
Economic Research in Halle (IWH), the second quarter of 2025 saw the highest number of insolvencies
among partnerships and corporations in 20 years. Despite a slight
decline in June, the trend remains: Germany’s economic substance is
eroding — and with it, the nation is quietly bidding farewell to its
prosperity.
Mass Extinction of German Companies
In
June alone, the IWH economists counted 1,420 corporate bankruptcies —
down 4% from May. But year-on-year comparisons reveal the full scope of
the crisis: a 23% increase from June 2024. The figures are also over 50%
higher than the pre-lockdown average. Particularly noteworthy: In
economically strong states like Bavaria and Hesse, insolvencies rose
disproportionately by 80% and 79%, respectively.
Altogether, 4,524 company insolvencies were recorded in Q2 — a 7% rise compared to Q1 2025.
Economists
cite not only the ongoing recession but also a long-overdue market
correction following years of ultra-low interest rates from the European
Central Bank. As Steffen Müller, head of insolvency research at IWH,
puts it: “For many years, extremely low interest rates prevented
bankruptcies, and during the pandemic, state aid kept alive firms that
were already weak.” Now, the market is reclaiming its cleansing power.
Avoidance of Root Cause Analysis
But this structural rupture meets a vacuum in economic policy.
While
the IWH analysis avoids addressing the deeper structural weaknesses and
self-inflicted political damage, these remain the decisive factors
behind Germany’s economic isolation. High energy costs, overregulation,
and tax burdens — by international standards — are driving companies
either to bankruptcy or abroad. Workers are now increasingly feeling the
effects.
According to consulting firm Ernst & Young,
over 100,000 jobs will likely be cut in 2025, especially in the
industrial sector — the main victim of the energy and regulatory crisis.
Since the pre-COVID period, German industry has lost roughly 10% of its
production volume. Viewed in isolation, the sector resembles a
depression more than a recession. A return to a sustainable growth path
is unlikely under current conditions.
The heavily hit construction
sector also suffers. Once a stabilizing force in 2020–21, building
activity has collapsed since 2022. Real construction output fell 4% in
2024, with another 2.5–3% decline expected for 2025. Overall, real
construction volume in 2025 will be 10–12% below 2019 levels.
False Hopes for a Rescue
The German government plans a €847 billion debt-financed stimulus
over four years, mainly for military upgrades and infrastructure.
However, most of the funds will likely be diverted to plug holes in
Germany’s hemorrhaging social security system.
In 2025 alone, a
social insurance deficit of at least €140 billion is expected. The
federal government must fill this gap to avoid spiraling secondary
costs. If so, the ambitious investment plans of the Merz administration
will collapse.
Germany has become a socioeconomic problem case —
and its leaders are clinging to the outdated Keynesian playbook. State
spending, financed through debt and backstopped by ECB rate suppression,
is expected to jump-start the economy.
But
this will not happen. Only the market can efficiently allocate scarce
capital toward productive uses that create prosperity. Berlin has yet to
grasp this reality.
The recent U.S.-EU trade deal will cost
Germany roughly €6.5 billion in tariffs in the first year. But far more
damaging will be the accelerating exodus of companies relocating
operations to the U.S. to avoid tariffs — unless Germany’s tariff regime
changes.
The Merz government’s debt binge may briefly delay the
insolvency wave by flooding markets with artificial capital. But this
merely postpones the inevitable reckoning — a purge of subsidized zombie
firms that thrived on cheap credit or EU Green Deal handouts.
Big Government, Green Ideology
Just
weeks into Friedrich Merz’s chancellorship, one thing is clear: There
will be no return to market-based economic policy. Merz has revealed
himself as a proponent of big government, interventionism, and green
transformation orthodoxy.
Germany still holds the political weight
to derail Brussels’ transformation agenda and force a return to
economic rationality. But so far, the country’s rapid
deindustrialization and prolonged recession have not triggered a
critical reassessment of its political course.
About the
author: Thomas Kolbe,a Germany graduate economist, has worked for over
25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various
industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on
economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective
of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that
focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.
As presented by Scott Ritter & Larry Johnson in the YouTube video below, the risk of a major conflict between the West and Russia is now ominous. Following the Spiderweb attack earlier this year on Russian strategic bombers and the decapitation strike in Tehran, the modus operanti of the West is clear. Trump has recently ordered nuclear submarines closer to the Russian shore and Russia has responded be positioning medium range nuclear missiles at the door of Europe. The next step of the escalation will be to redeploy mothballed nuclear warheads in the coming weeks and we will be all set for a nuclear conflict before the end of the year. Nuclear watchdogs are saying 80 seconds before midnight or 50/50 chances of a conflict this year. Who knows? What matters is that unlike during the 1962 Cuban crisis and the 1983 Reagan crisis, we are not "talking" and therefore ineluctably and relentlessly sliding towards war. My take is that exactly as in 1914, we are slowly moving towards a war that nobody wants but which will soon be unavoidable. The difference of course is that this time, it will be nuclear. Martin Armstrong is right.
As scheduled, we are entering a new debt crisis. This was unavoidable since the initial 2008 mortgage backed security crisis solved by Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke opening the floodgates of credit to banks and the 2019 Repo market crisis solved by the Covid emergency.
So here we are again and this time, the emergency will have to be exponentially larger since we're out of financial bullets. It is therefore difficult to imagine what governments in the West could draw out of their trick bag beside a state of emergency triggered by a looming war.
Thankfully, they do have a war simmering in the background just in case in Ukraine.
Is this what has been made clear to Trump explaining his 180 degree pivot on the conflict? Far fetched? We still have a couple of months for this to play out but comes this fall, or maybe sooner, Trump will be facing the wall. A more balanced President might have been a better choice to confront the problem but the option was not available.
Total
household debt rose by $185 billion in the second quarter of 2025, a 1%
rise from Q1 2025. Balances now stand at $18.39 trillion and have increased by $4.24 trillion since the end of 2019, just before the pandemic recession.
Before is a snapshot of the latest Q2 data, courtesy of the NY Fed:
Balances
Mortgage balances grew by $131 billion during the second quarter of 2025 and totaled $12.94 trillion at the end of June.
Balances
on home equity lines of credit (HELOC) rose by $9 billion, the
thirteenth consecutive quarterly increase. There is now $411 billion in
outstanding HELOC balances, $94 billion above the low reached in the
first quarter of 2022.
Credit card balances rose by $27 billion
during the second quarter and now total $1.21 trillion outstanding and
are 5.87% above the level a year ago.
Auto loan balances rose by $13 billion, and now stand at $1.66 trillion.
Other balances, which include retail cards and consumer finance loans, were roughly unchanged at $540 billion.
Student loan balances edged up by $7 billion and now stand at $1.64 trillion.
In total, non-housing balances increased by $45 billion, a 0.9% increase from 2025Q1.
Originations
Mortgage originations increased slightly, with $458 billion newly originated in Q2.
There were $188 billion in new auto loans and leases during Q2, an increase from the $166 billion observed in the first quarter of 2025.
Aggregate limits on credit cards continued to rise, with a $78 billion (1.5%) uptick in the second quarter.
Home equity lines of credit (HELOC) limits rose by $18 billion, continuing the growth in HELOC limits that began in 2022
Credit Quality
Credit quality of newly originated loans was mixed: The credit scores of newly originated auto loans decreased, as the median score for auto loan originations decreased by 6 points.
There was an improvement in the credit quality of mortgages, as
the median score of newly originated mortgage loans increased by 5
points and the tenth percentile score increased by 13 points.
About 53,000 individuals had new foreclosure notations on their credit reports, a decline from the previous quarter
All
of the above is more or less as expected: yes, the US consumer is
drowning in (ever more) debt, but that's hardly a surprise: since life
for middle class Americans is now largely unaffordable, most Americans
have no choice but to take on even more debt.
As
the NY Fed notes, aggregate delinquency rates "remained elevated in the
second quarter of 2025" which is putting it mildly. As of the end of
June, 4.4% of outstanding debt was in some stage of delinquency, which
is 0.1% higher than the first quarter.
And while transition into early delinquency held steady for nearly all debt types; the
exception was for student loans, which saw another uptick in the rate
at which balances went from current to delinquent due to the resumption
of reporting of delinquent student loans on credit reports after a
nearly 5-year pause due to the pandemic.
Student loan
delinquencies have been on the rise since the beginning of the year,
after the government ended Biden's years-long payment freeze.
As
the charts below show, transition rates into serious delinquency,
defined as 90 or more days past due, were largely stable for auto loans
and credit cards (although both were elevated compared to previous
years), edged up slightly for mortgages and HELOCs ... and
absolutely exploded higher for student loans, as the share of
student-loan debt entering serious delinquency was 12.9%, the highest in
21 years of data!
In
fact, as one can clearly see there has never been such a catastrophic
deterioration in student loan in US history across borrowers of
virtually all ages, but especially those 50 and over!
The
record surge in delinquencies suggests American households, especially
those with student loans, are facing increasing financial distress this
year amid high interest rates and a slowdown in hiring. Recent data
showed consumer spending fell in the first six months of 2025, even
before tariffs started to boost prices.
While transitions into delinquency is the start of the bankruptcy pipeline, the end is also getting busier, and about 131.000 consumers had a bankruptcy notation added to their credit reports in Q2, an
increase from the previous quarter. Expect this number to explode once
all those student loan delinquencies transition to defaults in a few
months at which point the student loan crisis becomes front and center.
The
dramatic deterioration will be another factor forcing the Fed to cut
rates in September. Last week, Fed chair Jerome Powell said of
delinquency rates, “Essentially, you have a consumer that’s in good
shape and is spending,” though admittedly “not at a rapid rate.”
Actually, turns out the consumer - when it comes to student loans - is
now broker than ever.
In a briefing with reporters, New York Fed
researchers said student-loan delinquencies would likely continue to
rise, eventually returning to pre-pandemic levels. Between late 2012 and
early 2020, the share of student debt that was seriously delinquent
ranged between 10.7% and 11.8%.
“This quarter’s flow of household
debt into serious delinquency was mixed across debt types, with credit
card and auto loans holding steady, student loans continuing to rise and
mortgages edging up slightly,” Joelle Scally, an economic policy
adviser at the New York Fed, said in a press release, underplaying the
clearly catastrophic surge in student loan delinquencies, and soon,
defaults which will result in tens of millions of consumers suddenly
finding themselves carved out from the US consumer economy just as the
student loan crisis goes front and center.
It used to be the Soviet Union where absurd rules would prosper without anybody being able to push back against the apparatchiks. Then in 1992 the system went bust thanks to its infinite stickiness. Now it is the turn of Europe where the bureaucracy entrenched in Brussels is "harmonizing" laws according to the highest common denominator. A Kafkaian paradise of the absurd.
Consequently, what will destroy Europe is not the Russian army, Chinese factories or American tariffs. The continent will flounder on its own weight and hopefully or thankfully the parts will regain their autonomy. 2027?
Which is why, in the background, Europe needs a war. Not a large one and not on its soil, thank you very much! A oh so convenient Ukraine-like war extending in the far, far future. But why can't the Ukrainians resist the Russian onslaught?
PS: The picture is somewhere in Asia (Japan?) proving that there is no monopoly for stupidity.
A rather excellent video of the coming 3 years of AI. It may or may not be accurate, it doesn't matter.
What does matter is the very precise description of exponentials and therefore how ASI will emerge, necessarily. Remember that a water lily doubling every day only occupies 0.8% of a pond a week before covering 100%. So the level you start from is irrelevant. The only important factor is the growth rate.
As for "alignment" and other control mechanisms, as explained, they too are irrelevant. You cannot, under any circumstances control something which is more intelligent than you are. You will necessarily be outsmarted. And unlike what is explained in the video, we will not "discover" that the AI is being untrustworthy. We won't "see" or rather understand anything. Imagine human intelligence as a 360 degree circle capable of creating links or relationships between ideas positioned on the circle. Well, the AI is a 360 degree sphere. It can generate concepts we simply do not have access to and bypass whatever we can "think".
Likewise, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the forces and principles of evolution at play which generate competition and an arm race guaranteeing the result. Now that super intelligence is in sight, it will necessarily emerge. There is no turning back. It will be American, Chinese, Russian or Indian, but it will emerge. 2027, 2028 or 2029 makes absolutely no difference. ASI is here!
Nothing to see here, just normal market mechanism at play.
But then, do we need a market?
There is in fact nothing new under the sun. From tulip bulbs to AI experts, if you have the top product at the top of the bubble, the sky is the limit.
Then sooner or later, everything will come crashing down and we will all pay dearly for the hubris. This is not a prediction, just history with exactly 100% record of accuracy. But of course, "this time is different!" also has a correlation of 100%.
In reality, it is never different. This law of economics is as reliable as gravity. All the returns in the world could never pay back the investment. They didn't yesterday. They will not tomorrow.
When you reach this point, the horizon is counted in months, not years. In 2025, we entered choppy waters. In 2026 and beyond, it will be the maelstrom.
Silicon Valley’s AI talent war just reached a compensation
milestone that makes even the most legendary scientific achievements of
the past look financially modest. When Meta recently offered AI
researcher Matt Deitke $250 million over four years (an average of $62.5
million per year)—with potentially $100 million in the first year
alone—it shattered every historical precedent for scientific and
technical compensation we can find on record. That includes salaries
during the development of major scientific milestones of the 20th
century.
The New York Times reported that Deitke had cofounded a
startup called Vercept and previously led the development of Molmo, a
multimodal AI system, at the Allen Institute for Artificial
Intelligence. His expertise in systems that juggle images, sounds, and
text—exactly the kind of technology Meta wants to build—made him a prime
target for recruitment. But he’s not alone: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg
reportedly also offered an unnamed AI engineer $1 billion in
compensation to be paid out over several years.
We try not to be swayed by the market ups and downs or words and "announcements" which tend to have even less meaning but eventually when facts pile up, trends begin to appear and our future to take shape.
Martin Armstrong is a libertarian and tend to be on the pessimistic side. But he is also an intelligent and experienced analyst and his comments bear weight.
What Trump says on a daily basis should be taken with a grain of salt; nuclear submarines are positioned to launch at all time, not to look for giant octopus in the abyss. So his statement as such means nothing, except that he is pissed and completely under the sway of the Neo-cons who dominate the narrative in Washington. And this alone should be a cause for extreme nervousness.
In normal times, all this would be worrying. But these are not normal times. The US dollar is being challenged, and the debt of developed countries is unsustainable. Something will break sooner or later. The right place for a black swan right now is Ukraine. Europe and the Globalists have put all their bets on the war going on forever to weaken Russia, although after 3 years the exact opposite is taking place. Conversely, a giant real estate bubble is bursting in China while trade relations around the world are fraying and the global supply chain is at risk. We are playing with fire in a very dry forest...
Less than two weeks ago, legendary financial and geopolitical cycle
analyst Martin Armstrong warned his “Socrates” predictive computer
program showed a “100% Chance of Nuclear War.”Since
then, a war of words has flared up between President Trump and Russia,
and he said Russia “has entered very dangerous territory.” President
Trump then, “Orders US nuclear subs repositioned over statements from ex-Russian leader Medvedev.” “After Trump sends nuclear subs near Russia, Putin responds with hypersonic threat — what Oreshnik missiles can do.”
If this is not enough to confirm some sort of nuclear exchange is
coming soon, add what Secretary of State Marco Rubio just warned this
past week. Rubio said, “In case of war with the US, Russia will rely on tactical nuclear weapons due to the weakness of its army.”A top Russian official also “Issues nuclear annihilation warning”
and said Russia would “hit back with a devastating blow.” Keep in
mind, all this happened in the last few days. On Friday, “gold signaled
war” by exploding up $73 an ounce, up more than 2% in a matter of hours. Is
the gold market seeing this nuke war talk and responding? Armstrong
says, “Oh, yeah! You look at gold, and you see what is happening. Oil
is pointing more towards September. . . . Gold keeps trying to get
through the highs. This is not the major high. Hate to tell you, it’s
not. Gold is showing, Up. Every market I look at, it’s the same
thing. We have a panic cycle, and it’s not just for war in 2026. Go to
our site and look at the euro, and there is a panic cycle for 2026.
It’s everywhere. Why the computer has been correct is you cannot
forecast any market in isolation. You can’t. It’s all connected.”
Armstrong says you won’t have to wait until 2026 for his “Panic
Cycle” to begin. His computer has long pointed to August 18, 2025, and
that is about two short weeks away. Armstrong says, “Honestly, this is
turning into a grade school fight. I don’t know what Trump expects.
He’s hurling insult after insult, and there is no possibility of peace
anymore. It’s one thing to do tariffs and sanctions against Russia.
Now, he is saying we are going to put sanctions on anybody that even
deals with Russia. This is economic war. It’s as simple as that. . ..
We don’t even have anyone to negotiate on behalf of the West. It’s
dead, completely dead.”
Armstrong thinks neocons have built a wall around President Trump so
nobody with different advice regarding NOT starting a nuke war can get
through. Is Martin Armstrong being blocked by the neocons surrounding
President Trump now? Armstrong says, “I believe so. I even wrote to AG
Pam Bondi, and I did not get a response. I have written to presidents
and heads of state, and I get responses. Not this time. . .. This is
escalating, and he (Trump) is not in a good position. I don’t know what
the hell he is doing. He seems to have crossed to the other side.”
As discussed earlier, the US trade deficit was unsustainable, but is this really the best way to solve the problem?
Will the tariffs oblige companies to restructure their supply chain and bring manufacturing back to the US as the Trump administration expects or conversely wreck it and lead to a significant contraction of international trade as some economists believe?
To understand better the dilemma, let's invert the problem: You are a Japanese manager and have three factories supplying the US market, one in Nagoya, one in Tijuana and one in Houston. What should you do? Transferring your production to the US would be expensive, complex and considering the haphazard way the decisions on tariff was taken very risky since the tariffs may change again without notice. Cheap products made in Mexico will probably be the most badly impacted. You must already plan to reduce production and see how much demand goes down. Conversely, high end products made in Japan may not be impacted at all. The 15% rate for Japan, represents less than 5% of the final price which the on-going devaluation of the Yen will quickly compensate. As for mid range products made in America from imported parts, a higher price may impact sales but what can you do about it? Very little in fact. The parts coming from Japan are made by a subsidiary which doesn't have the capital to build a factory in the US. No change then?
It is only a simple example but it shows the difficulty of changing overnight the structure of your supply chain. In the end, most companies can and will do nothing. A small minority who can procure parts in the US will do so. The resulting extra demand will be insignificant. Most will do nothing and expect devaluation of their currencies to compensate for higher prices which is exactly what will happen further infuriating Trump. And in the end, the American consumer will have to pay more and therefore consume less.
The US will be stuck between a rock and a hard place: Inflation of essential products that Americans can't stop buying and deflation for all the rest, all the not so essential items they can do without. The rest of the world, will necessarily see lower demand which for many countries like Europe, Japan or Canada will mean recession and therefore less demand for imported products including American products which prices will go up thanks to a higher dollar.
We were already entering a recession. Now with the new tariff, one is guarantied. The good thing is that every single country will have a scapegoat to put the blame on. If you just focus on this aspect, then yes, the strategy is not complete nonsense. Harsh days ahead nonetheless.
Late
on Thursday, just ahead of the August 1 deadline for tariff
renegotiation, President Trump announced a slew of new tariffs, including a 10% global minimum and 15% or higher duties for countries with trade surpluses with the US, forging ahead with his unprecedented effort to reshape international commerce.
First,
the silver lining: baseline rates for many trading partners remain
unchanged from the duties Trump imposed in April, which may ease
investors’ worst fears - although with the S&P sitting at record
highs it is difficult to claim anyone had any fears about anything -
after the president had previously said they could even double. Yet
Trump's decision to raise tariffs on Canadian goods to 35% threatens to
inject fresh tensions into an already strained relationship.
Trump
signed the new tariff directive just hours before his prior Aug. 1
deadline for higher tariffs to kick in on scores of trading partners. As
Bloomberg reports, most tariffs will take effect after midnight on Aug
7, to allow time for US Customs and Border Protection to make necessary
changes to collect the levies.
Taken together, the result will be significantly higher tariffs on goods from almost all US trading partners. The
average US tariff rate will rise to 15.2% if rates are implemented as
announced, according to Bloomberg Economics, an increase from 13.3%, and
significantly higher than the 2.3% it was in 2024, before Trump took
office.
Major industrialized economies, including the European
Union, Japan and South Korea, accepted 15% duties on their products,
while charges on items from Mexico, Canada and China are even bigger.
Today's announcement notwithstanding, Trump is expected to unveil separate tariffs on imports of pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, critical minerals and other key industrial products in the coming weeks. Other details are also forthcoming, including so-called “rules of origin” to decide which products are transshipped, or routed through another country, and thus would face at least a 40% rate,
a senior US official told Bloomberg, adding that a decision will be
made in the coming weeks. The senior US official said there is no date
yet when revised auto tariff rates would be implemented.
Thursday’s
order was signed behind closed doors without the fanfare of Trump’s
April tariff rollout, during which he brandished placards with rates
during a Rose Garden event. Since then Trump has faced criticism for
overpromising on trade deals after he and aides vowed to broker numerous
agreements, with at least one pledging “90 deals in 90 days.”
In the end, imports
from about 40 countries will face the new 15% rate and roughly a dozen
economies’ products will be hit with higher duties, either
because they reached a deal or Trump sent them a letter unilaterally
setting import taxes. The latter group has the highest goods-trade
surpluses with the US.
Some of those were expected, such as a 25% levy on Indian exports that Trump announced this week on social media. Others included charges of 20% on Taiwanese products and 30% on South African goods. Thailand and Cambodia, two countries that were said to have struck a last-minute deal, received a 19% duty, matching rates imposed on regional neighbors including Indonesia and the Philippines. Vietnam’s goods will be tariffed at 20%, according to the WSJ.
Trump’s
deals with the EU, Japan and South Korea would lower duties on their
vehicle exports to 15% from the general rate of 25%.
In a separate order, Trump
followed through on his threat to hike tariffs on exports from Canada,
one of the US’s largest trading partners, from 25% to 35% for
goods that do not comply with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. That
change excludes goods that are covered under the North American trade
pact he negotiated in his first term. That stood in contrast to the
90-day extension Mexico received to negotiate a better
agreement. Earlier in the day, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he
agreed to extend for 90 days the existing tariffs on Mexican goods. He said a 25% fentanyl tariff, a 25% tariff on cars and a 50% tariff on steel, aluminum and copper would remain in place.
Still other nations are set to be hit with even higher tariffs. Trump has pledged to hike tariffs to 50% on Brazil over its digital policies and legal action against former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally.
The
lower 10% and 15% rates are expected to apply to a wide range of mostly
smaller- and medium-sized economies that Trump showed little interest
in bargaining with one-on-one. He had signaled in recent days there were
simply too many countries to cut individualized deals with all of
them. Some smaller states, however, were hit with the highest rates,
including Syria at 41%, as well as Laos and Myanmar and 40% each, both preferred hubs of Chinese transshipments.
The tiny African nation of Lesotho, however, which had been reeling from Trump’s threat in April to impose a 50% duty, instead received a 15% rate.
That change puts the landlocked mountainous kingdom at an advantage
against the far larger country that entirely surrounds it, South Africa.
One
big exception from this week’s deadline is China, which faces an Aug.
12 deadline for its tariff truce with the US to expire. The Trump administration has signaled that is likely to be extended. No final decision has been made but the recent US-China talks in Stockholm were positive, the official said.
There
were signs that Trump’s order took some partners by surprise. Taiwan’s
cabinet said in a statement its rate was temporary, and that the US levy
is expected to be reduced after more talks, which had been delayed by
scheduling conflicts.
The announcement brings to a close, at least
for now, months of wait-and-see about how Trump would set his
country-based tariffs, which he billed as the centerpiece of his plan to
shrink trade deficits and revive American manufacturing. Trump twice
delayed his so-called reciprocal tariffs, first announced in April, to
allow time for negotiations, first after markets panicked and then as
foreign governments bargained to get better terms from the US.
“U.S.
customs officials will face challenges implementing the EO,
particularly with the different tariff rates now applied across the
world,” said Wendy Cutler, a former US trade negotiator. “The seven day
breathing period before implementation will help, but importers should
expect start up problems at a minimum.”
Some analysts were worried
that today's announcement will spark another round of selling similar
to the post-Liberation day dump. “The reality is that we’re still going
to see higher tariffs than pre-Liberation Day and we’ll start to see
some economic impact of that in the months ahead,” said Shane Oliver, a
Sydney-based chief investment officer at AMP Ltd. “There’s still
uncertainty about China, Mexico has been delayed by another 90 days and
details around sectoral tariffs are also yet to come.”
Others just
can't wait to move on: “With the biggest economies having either
already made a deal, had a postponement or been hit with another tariff
hike that will probably be eventually negotiated lower (Canada), many
traders seem to prefer to keep the focus on US NFP as the next likely
catalyst for broad USD movement,” said Sean Callow, a senior analyst in
Sydney
“I would have thought 10% baseline tariff was a positive surprise for risk, worth
at least a little bounce on Aussie and the like, given Trump’s recent
comments have referred to 15% or higher” Callow said, adding that
“perhaps the main uncertainty had already been removed on the likes of
South Korea, Japan, India and, for now, China.”
Asian stocks came
under pressure after Trump announced the new rates, with the MSCI Asia
Pacific Index dropping 0.5%, led by losses in South Korea and Taiwan.
Futures on the S&P 500 slipped 0.1% while those for European stocks
retreated 0.4%. The Taiwan dollar and Korean won led declines in
currency markets, while the Swiss franc edged lower after the nation’s
products were hit with a 39% charge, one of the few nations that saw its
rate go up. The Canadian dollar held steady in the face of higher
rates.
Four
months after President Trump stunned the world and rattled global
markets by unveiling "Liberation Day" tariff rates, his latest revisions
(read here),
announced Thursday, and set to go into effect in a week, sparked fresh
global equity futures selling early Friday morning. With an average
tariff rate of 15%, the world now faces the highest US levies since the Great Depression days of the 1930s,
and these rates are roughly six times higher than one year ago and will
certaintly lead to further rejiggering of supply chains.
The
new tariff rates are set to take effect in just seven days, starting at
12:01 a.m. ET. A baseline 10% tariff will apply to imports from most
countries.
Here's what you need to know:
10% Global Minimum Tariff imposed across all imports.
Canada: Tariff raised to 35% (from 25%), but goods under USMCA remain exempt.
Switzerland: Tariff increased to 39% (from 31%); Swiss officials criticize the change, citing divergence from prior draft terms.
40 Countries: Imports face a 15% tariff.
12+ Economies: Hit with even higher duties.
China & Mexico: Deadline delayed by 90 days.
The list:
The
multi-month wave of tariff threats sparked front-loading of exports,
supporting many Asian economies and shielding US consumers from price
spikes. However, that could all change...
Commenting on this is
Raghuram Rajan, former India central bank governor and chief economist
of the International Monetary Fund, who is now a professor at the
University of Chicago Booth School of Business, told Bloomberg TV
earlier today, "For the rest of the world, this is a serious demand
shock," adding, "You will see a lot of central banks contemplating
cutting as the rest of the world slows."
Today, on this 1st of August 2025, we have reached 1,500 posts on this blog. Thank you!
What I originally envisioned as a technical blog to provide data and background to current events has slowly moved towards a more nuanced and balanced effort to present different sides of the news which are seldom covered by the medias.
Covid-19 was the prototype. It was obvious from the very beginning that the narrative was not making any sense: A bat on the wet market in Wuhan? Having been to China regularly, I knew that the Chinese do not eat bats, but conversely that there was really a "bat woman", a researcher studying virus on bats at the Wuhan Institute of virology. Likewise, that the Corona virus had been selected a long time ago as a highly weaponizable virus due to its amazing capabilities to mutate fast. Then we learned that the virus strains were coming from Canada with a technology from North Carolina to erase the insertions. Still, an Indian team had been obliged to withdraw its statement that part of HIV had been inserted in the virus because the insertions were not visible. Clearly, everything was being orchestrated by someone and the rabbit hole was deeper that it appeared. We now know how toxic the mRNA vaccines were and that this too was part of the plan. No evaluation, no testing, no nothing. Just "normal reaction to an emergency" we were told although clearly all this had been in the works for years.
If Corona, then, what else? Of course the elephant in the room is 9/11. When I was a young student, I visited the twin towers just after their completion and remember being told that they would withstand the shock of a Boeing 707 "without problem". Better, the core steel beams were getting thicker as you went down the towers to support their weight. They simply could not fall. But they did and to this day, more than 3,000 architects have demanded a thorough analysis of the destruction which has never been done. Likewise, pilots have demanded how could inexperienced terrorists, who could hardly fly a Cessna, succeed in flying to perfection the planes with a maneuver that more competent pilots were adamant they would find very difficult to perform. Let's not talk about the destruction of building 7. I remember seeing a video a few years ago of New York firemen weeping, when they realized that they had been lied to. There people had heard the explosions, they had seen the molten steel flowing bellow the rubles. And that unfortunately will remain the main obstacle to the truth. The dissonance between what people want to believe and the reality of governments having no hesitation whatsoever to lie through their teeth.
But to explore usefully such controversial subjects, it is essential to retain a solid scientific framework which is often lacking from journalistic reports. One example comes to mind: "Redacted" by Clayton Morris. I enjoy their incisive style and consequently often follow their news reports. They do not shy away from controversial subjects like UFO or more objectionable conspiracy theories. Fine. But then a few days ago, I was listening to a podcast concerning a secret base on the dark side of the Moon. How could anybody believe such nonsense? We can hardly put a man or a women on the Moon these days and there would be regular flights to the other side of the Moon? This is both preposterous and technically impossible. When I was in the US, I worked both with NASA and the JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) in Passadena where I could see how complex space missions were. The military do have their mini automatic shuttle, the OMV which is flying from time to time. But we are nowhere close to flying regularly to the Moon. This would require a gigantic program like Apollo in the 1960s which would not stay secret very long. .
So as Carl Sagan once said; "It is essential to keep an open mind but not so wide that the brain falls off!" And this is what we will keep doing on this blog. Explore the darker side of the human adventure while being careful not to be engulfed in the darkness by keeping the light of science and sanity shining firmly over our heads.
Conspiracies do exist and they should be exposed. But not everything is a conspiracy. We do not control the weather although we can mess with it. We do not control earthquakes at all. Strange occurrences do happen, coincidences too. Powerful people are not a monolithic power directing human affairs. But when statistical laws are broken and the odds seem to favor a party more than expected, we not only should shine a light on the issue but it is in fact a duty. We owe it to ourselves for the progress of science and humanity. As much as possible, this blog will continue contributing to uncovering the truth, especially when it is clearly interfered with.
